Profit margins in South Africa’s minibus taxi industry have been under pressure long before the COVID-19 lockdown.
Karel Prinsloo / AFP via GettyImages
The role of government should be to improve and reorganise this sector to address the needs of users. The proposed national operational subsidy is an opportunity to do precisely that.
Scorpions used to be a rural problem in Brazil. Now, residents of São Paulo and other urban areas are dealing with an infestation of these venomous creatures.
AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini
Brazil’s scorpion infestation, which is terrorizing residents of São Paulo and other major cities, is a classic ‘wicked problem.’ That means officials must think outside-the-box to fix it.
A man gets his drinking water from a Cape Town neighbourhood in 2017.
Rodger Bosch/AFP
In South Africa, Cape Town fears “Day Zero”, when the city will have to ration water drastically. The phenomenon threatens other cities as well but solutions exist.
Firefighters didn’t expect to find hundreds of homeless families squatting in a São Paulo building that caught fire.
REUTERS/Leonardo Benassatto
Hundreds of squatters were living in a vacant police station in São Paulo when fire broke out on May 1, killing up to four people. The residents were part of Brazil’s nationwide homeless movement.
The dangerously low Threewaterskloof dam, a major supplier of water to the city.
Shutterstock
Cape Town is testing new strategies to nudge domestic users into reducing their water use.
Brutal police raids on São Paulo’s so-called ‘Crackland’ have shocked the city and paved the way for redevelopment of this prime piece of real estate.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
Luz, a once-elegant 19th-century neighbourhood in downtown São Paulo, is prime real estate. But redevelopment means clearing out a homeless encampment known as “Crackland”.
Programme participants join in during capoeira lessons in Sao Paulo’s so-called ‘Cracolandia’.
Sebastian Liste/Noor for the Open Society Foundations
A public health programme respected locally, lauded globally, and based on the best science for helping homeless crack users, is at risk of falling victim to Brazil’s partisan politics.
For women studying and working in Eurocentric institutions, wearing natural hair can be a symbol of resistance.
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Chelsea Johnson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Natural hair has become a political rallying point for women across the African diaspora. For these women, wearing natural hair is way to resist Eurocentric norms and “post-racial” political thought.
Historic: weather patterns similar to what’s causing the drought in California are happening in Brazil.
Hudsӧn/flickr
The same persistent weather pattern bringing hot, dry conditions to California is likely connected to a punishing drought in the Sao Paulo area in Brazil.
Welcome to the Cantareira desert.
SEBASTIAO MOREIRA / EPA